21.co Bitcoin Computer Now on Sale
21.co
21.co
So taking the computer's price of $400 and using this calculator [1] w/ the current difficulty level, 50 Gigahashes/s, 15W consumption, 5% pool commission, $0.15 $/kW energy costs, and the current exchange rate of $332USD/BTC we get:
$0.07 in daily revenue or
5714 days (15.6 years) to breakeven assuming constant difficulty and current exchange rate levels.
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> Please note: the satoshis you mine provide a source of readily-available bitcoin for application development, but are not intended to be used for investment purposes.
I wonder if they included this disclaimer because the 21 Bitcoin computer will never generate a profit, or because of some other legal barrier? Either way, they should stick "NOT AN EFFICIENT MINING DEVICE, SOLELY FOR DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES" at the top of their description instead of dancing around the issue, making it seem like they're hoping to lure naive miners into purchasing the device.
[1] http://www.alcula.com/calculators/finance/bitcoin-mining/
The better question might be is this a problem people are willing to spend $400 to solve?
If their endgame is to create a mining chip that can be realistically put into devices, they'd better figure out a much better form factor for it as well.
By taking out all the risk, variance, and profit, 21 is step-by-step approaching a design where customers just buy bitcoin with money. Except they feel like they are mining, with a very wasteful, expensive, inefficient chip.
Buying bitcoin was the right design all along. Eventually, 21 might discover this, if they can get over all the sunk costs they've invested in making mining chips without a market.
On topic: I think the neat part of 21 is that it seems to be a step forward in realising microtransactions, in a decentralised manner. Right now the only way around microtransactions is having a centralised pool, where you e.g. put $5/month in, and it pays services out of that pool. The problem with paying services directly is the base fees associated with transactions (for CC, it's around $0.15 + 3%, through Stripe).
Having to pay a few cents in transaction fees to get a transaction included on the Bitcoin blockchain does not seem like a great platform for true microtransactions(say <$1).
21 offers their own microtransaction service, but that's just a centralized shared wallet/ledger that offers nothing new. There are multiple centralized services where you can send someone else bitcoin.
The only thing that has potential is payment channels, but I'm not sure how they are going to be implemented in a way that bypasses the Bitcoin blockchain's miner fee.
I think the mined satoshis should be thought of a stream of digital ink -- ensuring your device always has enough ink to at least write into the ledger (blockchain).
If successful, and 21Inc units become an inherent part of IoT, I think we would see a lot of satoshi level transactions that aren't meant to be quantified in USDs; the transaction will just be meant to show proof of interaction between two machines. Ex. your vehicle passed X checkpoint at Y time - use a satoshi to write it into the ledger.
I can see this would make payments more decentralized, but how much do regular users or developers care about decentralized systems? Most of the world depends on highly centralized systems, including the decentralized protocols such as email or the Internet itself.
The way 21 is positioned on this page is (I'd say poor) marketing meant to sell these devices to developers who aren't yet sold on the next thing in Bitcoin (i.e. smart contracts). The story told on this page and the roadmap they're showing investors is completely different. Just wait.
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=bitcoin+%22smart+con...
This could all be done with your own server or whatever, the 21.co machine just makes setup easier.
You can develop for Bitcoin either by a) using chain.com or blockchain.info or b) by installing Bitcoin on your computer and waiting for the blockchain to sync.
Can anyone explain why one would want this?
I'm confused as to what problem this is actually solving. I thought I could build bitcoin-payable apps using my laptop?
Current max theoretical is ~50GB annual, if every block is the max 1MB. There is an ongoing debate about whether to increase the max block size.
[1] https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?timespan=1year&sh...
"Growth hacking" has become very annoying lately.
> It is designed for developers to easily build Bitcoin-payable apps, services and devices
The 21 Bitcoin Computer is the first computer with native hardware and software support for the Bitcoin protocol. That means the hardware to mine a stream of small amounts of bitcoin for development purposes, and the software to make that bitcoin useful for buying and selling digital goods.
Developers use the 21 Bitcoin Computer to quickly add Bitcoin-based monetization to any app, service, or device. Please note: the satoshis you mine provide a source of readily-available bitcoin for application development, but are not intended to be used for investment purposes.
A legitimate use case. This isn't intended as a serious miner (they're calling out satoshis, which is the smallest divisible unit of a coin, a hundredth of a millionth, with a USD value of a 3 millionths of a penny) and isn't sold as one.
It stumps me why they'd include the miner at all, but they may be trying to pivot from the miner as their main product. My impression from their press releases was that they were aiming more at crazy IoT things like embedding miners into household objects.
The UX is definitely different, but it works for me.
Deviates significantly from a normal user experience and results in a jarring experience for me personally.
I'm not interested in fighting with ridiculous scrolling games. If they don't care about testing their ridiculous scrolling plugins, I don't care about their product.
Sometimes I reach out to companies on Twitter or email telling them to please disable their weird scrolling effects. Nobody seems to care. I conclude that this behavior signifies a company that doesn't care about user experience.
By now I'm a little curious about these things, so I did a simple test of starting at the top and trying to scroll down to read the rest of the page. I can't find any way to consistently scroll to the third page. Just touching the touchpad on the second page causes an upwards scroll, even when I'm very obviously trying to scroll down.
https://21.co/learn/21-mining/#redecentralizing-bitcoin-with...
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Regarding the product. I don't see why developers need to develop using actual bitcoins so I don't buy that spiel. There's alternative testing blockchains for a reason.
It seems to me like they are simply trying to become one of the dominant mining pool players. I don't see how they increase mining pool decentralization. All other mining devices are not tied to one mining pool. Their's is.
The main idea is to buy and sell digital good and services, that's the big revolutionary bit of this, not some mining pool scam.